Seriously. Avery acts as if Benny is just a typical teenager. I don’t know what kind of delusion he had about his “family,” but it seems like he should be a little more “aware” than this. They wouldn’t be with him if they had any reasonable choice in the matter.

It is, Mikael. In America, children are expected to either agree with adults or not speak at all. Contradicting something an adult says is considered disrespectful.

Though, in this case, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say it may have more to do with Benny’s tone and the way he phrased the first sentence. One thing no amount of dialogue or static imagery can truly convey is tone. Benny may be taking a particularly rude or aggressive/bitter (another thing children are not permitted in the US) tone.

Thats not universally true in America (thank God). There are certainly limits people place on childrens behavior but it varies from region to region and family to family. In my family we weren’t expected to stay silent or nod in blind agreement.

I’m not sure what Avery is doing is so wrong. The way I see it, he’s trying to provide some form of stability in Benny’s life by being an authority figure. I’m not saying it’s the best way to do it either, and there are definitely a lot of problems with a stepparent taking on the position of raising and setting rules for a stepchild if they haven’t accepted them as an authority figure, but trying to provide as much of a normal existence as possible for Benny could actually help him in the process of coping with the trauma he’s experienced.

Maybe it is cultural, but if I were to talk like that to my mom, there would at least be a disapproving gasp. Figure also that Avery probably sees Carrie as more fragile and in need of emotional protecting.

(in reply to DoctorDoctor) it’s a common situation. I think it might have a lot to do with how conservative your parents are.

Myself, I’m reading Benny as being disrespectful, but Avery is being light-handed in ‘correcting’ him. Av’s saying, once, “Don’t talk like that, it’s rude”, and then letting Benny continue with what he was saying. This lets Benny know that the way he’s talking is socially unappreciated, but that what he has to say is okay.

My own parents, who’re much more convinced of their own ‘rightness’, would have kept hissing at me until I stopped speaking altogether, which (if it weren’t for my inability to read social cues instinctively) would have ‘taught’ me that my opinions were worthless even to have.

Avery’s not going to be a “Fun stepdad”, but he’s going to be providing stability for Benny, which is probably the better thing to do here.

DoctorDoctor: It’s really more about how you say than what you say, especially in you’re challenging an authority figure or (in this case) belittling or undermining them in front of people. I mean, having an opinion is one thing, but there’s a way you speak to peers and a way you speak to parents. Anything less feels weird to me.

I’m not sure that what Brown is doing with Benny is much different than what Todd and Andi are trying to do with Amanda, ie, “Let’s work through your issues, but you have to be nice while doing it.” You notice he does let Benny talk, and I suspect that the next panel is going to be them talking through things.
If all we saw of Todd and Andi was the times they’ve told Ananda “you can’t talk that way,” and not everything that’s been happening behind the scenes, we might get pretty annoyed with them too. I think Brown is trying to do the same thing, though perhaps badly. But we really haven’t seen enough of the behind the scenes to make that call yet.

I would be more disturbed if Avery neglected to check Benny’s rude behavior. So far he’s compared 8 year olds to “jailbait”, teased a scared little girl after eavesdropping on her, and tried to dis his mother’s opinion, his stepfather’s work, and the colony that took in his people, all with one bratty comment. They can work out their issues later, but when Benny behaves badly, it needs to be addressed, before he ends up like so many other characters in this comic whose bratty ways have been allowed to ruin rampant.

Still, the kid has a point. The adults are talking as if he’s supposed to embrace his new life with smiles and cheerfulness after the kid watched his father die (or at least get captured by the humans who killed him), went from living as nobility in a (for their culture) modern city to living like a beggar in their culture’s equivalent of a shantytown, and now has to live on land, outside his environment, with the replacement for his father being a man of the same species as the ones who killed his father, while he watches his mother cozy up to this interloper who, for all he knows, could decide to kill them both on a whim, and we have yet to hear anything about where his sister is. He’s hit the nail on the head about the refugee camp being a bunch of people pretending what they have is as good as what they had, and he’s probably sick of being told it’s not so bad by people who, from his perspective, don’t know jack about his situation or him, and having to bow down to someone he sees as a living reminder of his father’s death.

I’ll grant you that his tone and maybe his word choice need work, and that SHOULD be addressed, but I’m not seeing how his comment about the refugee camp was bratty, aside from the aforementioned tone and the ridiculous idea that a child contradicting adults is inherently wrong.

I actually wonder if the marriage was arranged as part of a negotiation and Avery grew to care for his two Sarnothi charges, or what. He doesn’t seem to get that Benny hates his situation and that they have to make do and play nice with other humans even though they killed his dad. And who the heck is the other kid and where is he/she? Perhaps Benny is also sore about that, too? Knowing now that it was the death of Benny’s dad that fueled this whole thing, I get his feelings of resentment and hate-the-world. Wish he had something more to cling to. Wish he could see he has more…

No wonder Benny’s so angry. If my father were brutally tortured and killed by the same people I was now forced to live with … and if I were in a situation where I was forced to pretend that one of those people was now the replacement for that father …

Holy shuffles. Give the kid credit for not going on a murderous rampage. I don’t even know what kind of therapy would help with that situation.

True, but he’s still a child, and it’s more complicated even than “those people.” It might be more accurate to say “that species.” And it’s been pointed out in the comments since the story of Behn’s family was first told that humans aren’t particularly nice even to each other. 🙁

If Benny is any indication, I’d guess that Sarnothi teenagers can be every bit as angsty and sullen as any human teenager. Although in Benny’s case he’s got far better reason than most.

Many of the teens I speak to focus on what their lives don’t have, and not on what their lives DO have. And I think that is a natural part of the process, of growing up; learning to value people over things.
THEY (the neighbors) have a boat, WE do not have a boat! Why can’t we buy a boat?
Because WE are sending you to college, so WE are choosing to spend the money we have, in a different manner.

Kid lost his father, the life he was used to, possibly his sister, his home, and darn near all semblance of order and peace in his life. His entire world’s been torn asunder for reasons he may not fully understand (aside from, “The humans killed my father!”), and fixing it is well beyond his control or power. Cut the kid some dang slack. This isn’t some brat crying over not getting the newest Xbox. This is a kid who, for reasons completely out of his control, is going through a living hell and stuck in a world that is almost completely alien to him. He has every right to complain about what he’s lost.

Holy blue hell and cheese on toast, I did NOT see that coming.
Well, I’ve been reading the comments so far…. this happened YEARS ago, when Benny would’ve been younger and FAR more impressionable than he is now. Perhaps it’s just had that time to fester and grow. I don’t know about the rest of you but childhood trauma can haunt you well into adult years, and you tend to remember little things as you get older that your mind protects you from when you’re younger. ‘

Perhaps Benny needs a more gentle, manipulative hand than the constant “don’t be rude” jibes from Avery.

And am I the ONLY one who sees that Carrie could’ve gotten with Avery because Avery was assigned to protect what was left of Behn’s family, only for the whole rom-com “it became something more” plot happened along? XD lol

Heck, their whole society seems based on family ties in their clans. Maybe this was a peace offering to make sure they knew that Avery and hence the govt. would treat Carrie et all as family/clan and would protect them?

And now I will compliment Benny on not being a solid ball of rage and hurt. He’s shown control, and a “regular” amount of teen angst, but not catatonically shut down or Truck/Amanda loss of control. When a child’s parent is murdered (and I can only speculate) the type of emotional problems, to say nothing of then losing everything to the war, and possibly being one of the first that scientists “discovered”/experimented on – the fact that he can see Avery or any human and not spit at them is extraordinary.

Benny doesn’t fully understand the overarching political situation of Sarnoth. All he is able to comprehend is his Dad died, everyone went to war over it, he lost a sibling and got chased out.

What he is not in a position to understand, due to experience, is Sarnoth was going to collapse anyway. Healthy, stable societies don’t just collapse over events like that. His Dad’s death, from the standpoint of a culture, is a relatively trivial event. US citizens have been murdered in foreign countries yet the US didn’t collapse into a civil war over it. Certainly it is a big deal to Benny, but not on the level of other Sarnothi engaging in genocide.

Sarnoth was not a stable, happy place, with factions on edge and looking for any excuse to go to war. Behn was just that excuse.

Benny has created an idealized past based on memory without really knowing that happiness was a mere illusion. He may very well be lucky since if his Dad wasn’t strung up by fishermen, there wouldn’t have been the refuge offer since it is no longer perceived that humans were responsible. His entire family, not half, could very well be gone.

But this isn’t to blame Benny. Even adults in the same situation lash out and blame external forces when their situation lays purely in the hands of the very leadership they actively supported. If adults that created their own misery by voting in politicians to office can’t grasp that the external world only can be blamed for nothing but the ultimate excuse for what those in power wanted anyway, how can a child be expected to get it?

Parents saying “don’t talk back” always bothers me. Kids should be able to say what’s on their mind and contradict adults, especially adults who they think are wrong. Sure, you can tell them to say things kindly and not be rude, but basically telling them to shut up or not to protest or complain is poor form.

I deal with that with my son. I have a very open, compassionate parenting style. I still have set rules for my kids, but they are allowed to choose their own paths, and have opinions. My oldest son has always had a strained relationship with his father (the guy is abusive and manipulative to everyone around him, and makes our son feel like crap because he lives with me and not him)… If my son tells me he doesn’t like something, I listen. If one of his siblings is up his butt, he is allowed to handle the situation to an extent, and then I step in (same as if he’s the antagonist). If he is working on a hobby and I say “do a thing”, but he needs a bit of time to finish up… I allow him that. These things are not allowed in his father’s house. If his dad or step-mom say “get off the computer”, he has to get off NOW. There is no, “Ok, hang on a sec” when he’s playing a MMO, they consider that “back-talking”.

With them, he’s not even allowed to decide what clothes he wants to wear, or how he has his hair… they ridicule him with “You’re just like your mother, always want to have things YOUR WAY, you’re nothing but a Little Katrina.” ….he’s 17.

Not only is there a time and a place for disagreement, there’s also the manner in which the disagreement is conveyed. Benny isn’t being told not to “talk back” because he’s just a kid and they don’t want him disagreeing with the adults, he’s being told not to talk back because of how disrespectful he is being towards his mother AND he’s doing so in a public place in front of company.

Is his anger understandable? Yes. But that doesn’t excuse him treating others poorly, ESPECIALLY his mother who by all we have seen isn’t harming him in any way and has just as much reason to be upset.

I wonder if Avery is trying more to be protective of his Shell-Shocked wife than be an ass to Benny. Benny’s mom tries to exert authority, but fails, and Avery is trying to support her, but getting it wrong…

I think Benny is remembering a different home. He’s young, he will likely have lived his whole life in the city under the Great lakes. Carrie however is old enough that she may have grown up somewhere else. I’m thinking the Sarnothi are not from Earth, their tech is too advanced and if they had been here throughout they centuries someone somewhere would have spotted one and told stories.

We’d have legends of fish people that were closer to the truth of the Sarnothi (what they really look like) than the myths of selkies and mermaids.

Early on in the comic’s history, I wondered which way that was going to go. (And either way is going to require some serious suspension of disbelief, to be honest.) But my opinion is that their known history and religion and so on does tell us that they’ve been here for a long time, and managed to escape notice.

I’ve been wondering the same thing. How could they possibly have stayed hidden that long? Either they are relatively recent arrivals to Earth (or at least the Great Lakes) OR they used some of their fancy shmancy technology to hide and over time as our technology has advanced that became less possible.

more curious is why if they have been here for some considerable time, reguardless of original origin, why have they not spread out from just the one city in the great lakes area? from selkie’s “care” notes, all they seem to need is access to fresh water and some means to avoid freezing temperatures. even though they are aquatic by nature, we know from selkie that there is no problem with them living a primary surface life so nothing would have held them to just the one lake.

we even know that within the context of the comic they can walk essentially freely in at least American society with no restrictions.

but according to the story, no one has actually discovered the city in the great lakes or seemingly this colony so they may be able to hid them even now. fishermen caught one of them in their fishing nets *outside* of the city on a picnic. the few that know of the city on the surface has been from fall out from that incident not the direct discovery of the city itself.

Why is short hair a “corruption”. Styles change, sometimes longer hair is fashionable, sometimes its not. Some people like short hair (I hate when my hair gets long, i want it short enough I don’t need to come it) some like long hair.

I would’ve been fussed at like that, myself. parents just kinda do that, in situations like his. a moody teen(if, for a good reason here) acts out, the father is usually the one to say something like ‘hush up, be a little more respectful.’
my dad would’ve been a LOT more angry about it, so I don’t see avery as a bad guy in this…

I’ve had something on my mind for a while now. What does Benny think of Selkie and her clan? From what I’ve read in the past the Sar’Teri were the ones who were wronged initially. All they wanted was reparations for the victim’s family and I would assume a formal apology from the fisherman. The Jin’Sorai wanted to go war… or a human sacrifice I couldn’t really tell.

I guess what I’m getting at is, would Benny have some hostile feelings towards Selkie and her clan?

Yep, that is Benny’s father that was the victim. The boy has the biggest reason so far of the “jerk characters” for being a jerk. My theory that he remembers everything he lost is confirmed, also he remembers his father and his father’s fate. This is probably him in his nicest setting to be honest. He’s hurt, confused, angry, and probably very scared.

It’s already been discussed before by Pohl and his wife that the way that Selkie speaks is due to the fact that the two languages have different rules for plurals. She still has her ‘accent’ because she learned the language via the crash course immersion process, whereas Pohl and Sai Fen were taught properly and thus were able to overcome their tense problem. Benny likely went through the same training, and given that he’s a kid with ‘a genetic condition’ that likely got him picked on, he probably worked really hard to erase his ‘accent’ so there was one less thing for the other kids to use to pick on him. Considering his attitude as a whole, I also hypothesize that he acts so brashly not just because of what he’s lost, but because if other kids did pick on him then he very likely forced himself to become someone who was tougher, someone who didn’t care what others thought in order to protect himself emotionally.